Planning: Enabling a Future in Chemistry at a Historically Black University

Nontechnical: Huston-Tillotson University (HT) is a small historically black university (HBCU) in Austin, Texas with 148-years history. Compared to other Texas-based universities, HT has considerable room for growth in their research capacity. During the past two years supported by Research Initiation Award (RIA), preliminary research data has been obtained by PI and her underrepresented undergraduate researchers.

In the future, professional collaboration must be developed in order to achieve scientific publication, considering the lack of advanced equipment or facilities at a small HBCU like HT. This step is also of importance to collect research data for PI’s future application for the Excellence in Research (EIR) award. Thus, various activities have been proposed such as training undergraduate researchers, conducting a small workshop with collaborators, visiting collaborators’ labs, participating in professional workshops, and conferences.

These efforts will contribute significantly to our final goal of enhancing the future for underrepresented students at HBCUs. Additionally, this EIR-planning award will help our chemistry program to grow. With the hiring and retention of experienced adjunct faculty, both the chemistry curriculum quality and diversity will be improved.

A professional chemistry workshop will be set up and the resulting collaboration will grow in visibility and stature as the event develops. Professional articles in chemistry will be published with HT as the first organization. Most importantly, new students will be attracted to the chemistry department and the detailed training that we provide will lead them to either a professional job in Industry or a postsecondary degree after their graduation from HT.

Technical: MOFs (metal organic frameworks) as porous crystalline materials have proven especially useful as nano platforms for catalytic reactions. Metalloporphyrin-based (cyclic structures consisting of four pyrrole rings joined together by four methine groups) catalysts can be incorporated in MOFs for polymerization of petrochemical monomers as well as non-petrochemical monomers.

The chemical environment within a MOF not only initiates the polymerization, but also enables the tuning the microstructure of the resulting polymer. After the modification on the inorganic nodes and organic ligands, the MOFs may be used as a stereo and chemical selective catalytic reactor, converting a specific monomer out of a mixture of monomers, and into highly tactic polymer.

Our Research objective is to develop an inexpensive recyclable metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) catalysts with collaboration with other labs. This will also support PI’s coming EIR application in polymerization by porphyrin MOFs catalysts, in which effort will focus on the adjustment of groups on Porphyrin as well as kinetic and mechanism studies. Utilizing collaboration with other labs in these areas, PI would be able to characterize her heterogenous MOFs catalysts.

Planning and collaboration activities will not only help to obtain access to modern equipment in chemistry, it will also foment new plans in related research areas. Lastly, various workshops, conferences, and trainings will help both faculty and students to improve our abilities to further advance in academia.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.